Bill Granger - The November Man

“Devereaux makes trouble, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Disturbed,” Weinstein said.

“Crazy,” Yackley said.

“Outside the rules.”

“Not a team player.”

Weinstein blinked. “This isn’t polo, Frank.”

“I meant—”

“Hanley tells him about Nutcracker. What about Nutcracker, Frank? You said it was important. What is in that old man’s mind?”

“We’re trying to find out—”

“And why did he say to Devereaux ‘There are no spies’? Tell me that, Frank.”

“I… I.” But there were things Frank Yackley did not know. Or did not seem to know.

“Code? Was he making a joke out of it? Like the graffiti in your washrooms over at D.A.?”

Yackley was amazed that Weinstein knew about the oars on the walls. He had had the walls scrubbed clean in two days. Weinstein really was on top of things.

“I wish you had come to me earlier,” Weinstein said. “Before all this mess with Hanley. When you first had suspicions about Hanley.”

That was a warning, Yackley thought. “I don’t see what else I could have done. It was so unusual. Nutcracker was such a strange idea.”

“No one denies that,” Weinstein said. He turned from Yackley to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. The White House below was bright under a bright March sky. Washington was warm with the approach of spring. The coming season seemed to move visibly from day to day. The blossoms would be blooming soon on the Japanese cherry trees that surrounded the tidal basin south of the White House.

“Why has Devereaux gone crazy?” Perry Weinstein said in a soft voice, still facing the window.

“I don’t know.”

“Hanley. And Devereaux.”

“Hanley isn’t crazy. I think he’s been under a strain, I think—”

“You think security may have been breached—”

“I think it is my duty—”

“Yes, of course.” Perry Weinstein turned around and faced Yackley, who fidgeted in the small side chair. “So what do we do about our long-sleeping agent?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“You want a sanction, is that it?”

“I… I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Yackley said, dancing away from the word.

“There is no sanction,” Weinstein said. “The term does not exist. It cannot be authorized. It isn’t in law or in case studies. It is illegal to sanction anyone, let alone a former employee of the government. It is impossible to authorize a sanction.” The words were delivered without tone, softly, as though a child in first grade, without understanding, were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Yackley waited.

“What do you suppose he will do?”

“Go to the Opposition,” Yackley said. “He has committed himself. He killed our chasers.”

“You really think so?”

“I think so. It is my best guesstimate,” Yackley said. “I have asked Mrs. Neumann for the full file, 201 and appendages. Here it is.” He handed the file in the folder to Weinstein but Weinstein did not take it. “Put it on the desk,” Weinstein said, staring at Yackley with curious eyes.

Yackley let the file drop onto the papers already littering the desk.

“You want a judgment.” Weinstein did not say it as a question.

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“The sooner the better.”

“I understand.”

“It’s important… that—”

“That it be handled inside the Section, you mean? Not by NSA? Not by CIA?” Weinstein’s voice, for the first time, took a tone that might be considered mocking. “Yes, I figured out why you wanted to see me. The buck stops here. It was the only true thing Harry Truman ever said. And then I doubt he said it in the first place.” Perry Weinstein smiled. He took Yackley’s hand though it had not been extended. “I’ll get back to you by morning,” he said. His eyes were cloudy now.

It was March 11. Hanley had been held for a week and a half. He had learned to adjust to life at St. Catherine’s.

Sister Mary Domitilla thought his progress was absolutely wonderful. She began to include Mr. Hanley in her prayers and in her sacrifices, including the sacrifice that involved the pain of cutting her nails severely almost every night. Her fingers were always raw and she refused to put salve on them.

Spring was not ready to come to the valley. There had been snow the previous morning and the valley was enveloped in whiteness from the streets of the old town all the way up the hill to the St. Catherine’s grounds. The four-wheel-drive vehicles marched through the hilly streets and people with ordinary cars did the best they could. They were all accustomed to hills and slick streets and the sense of isolation in endless winter.

Hanley was given clothing as a gift for good behavior on his sixth day. The clothing consisted of blue denims and a blue shirt marked with his name above the left pocket. He looked like a prisoner.

They ate in their own ward at night but there was a time, between three and five, when they went to the enclosure between the two fences for exercise. They could run along the enclosure or they could just stand around and breathe the clear, damp air of the valley. Hanley chose to run. Dr. Goddard said he was pleased because his response to the situation was “appropriate.”

The truth was, Goddard was puzzled.

The dose of HL-4 prescribed for Hanley from the first day was enough to render him harmless, perfectly docile, drowsy and enfeebled. Hanley was certainly more compliant than he had been—but why should he show such extraordinary energy in the afternoons in the yard between the electrified fence and the inner fence?

The electricity was never shut off for these afternoon excursions but the killing voltage was turned down. Now and again, one of the patients would make a bolt for the fence and touch it and be knocked down by the force of the electrical charge.

Hanley had been given a battery of examinations that showed he was in reasonable health for a man of his age. Dr. Goddard, in his second interview, said the absence of any physical cause of Hanley’s illness proved Dr. Goddard’s thesis that Hanley suffered from depression. The depression was induced by a chemical imbalance, Dr. Goddard said, as well as a “cross-wired burnout” in the brain.

Hanley had blinked at that.

“The brain is like a computer,” Goddard said. “The information it can process is controlled by the raw data fed to it. But computers can go haywire. That’s why computer owners have service contracts. That’s why you have government health insurance—it’s your service contract, in a sense.”

Hanley was given pills twice a day, at the morning and evening meals. He and the other patients stood in line at the nurse’s station outside the mess hall and docilely received the pills prescribed by Dr. Goddard. These were issued by the nurse on duty. In the morning, it was Sister Duncan, a simple soul of pressed habit and acne-infested features who could not be more than twenty, Hanley thought. In the evening, it was Nurse Cox, a formidable beast in a nurse’s white pants suit. The difference in their techniques helped Hanley’s game.

Both issued the pill and waited for the patient to swallow it.

There was a technique of slipping the pill under one’s tongue and throwing the paper cup of water back on the tongue and making a swallowing noise. The nurse then was to examine the mouth, to see that the pill had been actually swallowed. The patient opened wide and made an “ah” sound and then lifted his tongue, first on one side and then the other, to show that the pill was not being concealed.

Fortunately, Sister Duncan hated to look into people’s mouths. She was still a nurse in training and she thought there might be matters of human anatomy she might be able to avoid in the future: Men’s sex organs, blood, and bedpans.